* * *
'No-thing... No-thing,' the dog was gnawing a bone.
The next day, Joanna had flown away, leaving Dennis to the care of Helga.
He introduced them together and did not feel it. Let them do what they want to.
She was horrified with her thoughts but again as if from the outside.
Such a thing was cured by a similar thing: fall by fall.
Burden of jealousy turned into a bad state of the unknown infinite permissiveness.
Where the thing that first appeared to her as not so disgusting; she was not puritanical; but just shameful March-cat syndrome, unworthy of a man... from which it has at least considered herself fully insured somewhere on the outskirts of life suddenly became enticing to him precisely because of its shameful and indecency.
And men hurrying to the plane whom she had not noticed at close range, unless someone's nose in his back, began to pull her look that a powerful with a purple neck or with hairy hands or pungent smell of sweat or smoking.
he plane flew to Moscow, as she reclined in a chair in the painfully sweet half asleep, crept to this disgusting hole, stuffed greedily stretching her arms, wet mouths, sweaty faceless bodies, writhing like snakes.
She went trembling with fear and impatience, throwing clothes on the run, looking forward with a sweet horror as those digisting faceless hands, nails, mouths, wildly grunting and wheezing, tear her to shreds.
It was not a sweet-cherished dream of someone specific: it was a vision of her sweet is your abomination, horror, and faceless.
It was some a bloody crowd of low-grade thriller.
It was a morbid delusion, from which it is not that could not but did not want to get rid of.
A few hours later, after dipping her head into another abyss, this time the hopeless cases, shel cured the abyss by an abyss again and laughed over that foolishness. And forget about it.
A week or two past after that.
And then one morning...
"Jeanne, I'm just from an airplane. Denis will be with all the next day, the evening fly to their... He stayed here at some people, all at work.
Listen the address.
Kravchenko, chattering, preventing her from protesting, describing some corners, alleys, on which she must dash, headlong, into his bear hug.
The worst part was not even a cheeky Kravchenko's confidence that she, throwing things, will go very early in these stupid Mnevniki, but that she soon realized that, yes, she would.
The same ailment that forced him to fly to Novosibirsk in Mnevniki drove through Moscow.
The car seemed to have found a way by itself.
It merged with the rebellious body of Yana requiring Kolchugin, a Soviet superman who was Invented by her. His insatiable bear hugs, so strange and explosive now in a joined her unconscious with a familiar face Denis.
"I'm a whore," She again stated she already familiar, so primitive and crude and it was irresistible desire.
And there was no justification for what they say out there, in the south, worked stress, champagne and a 'the sea of Gagra'.
If it was still possible for anything to say about Kravchenko, not sorting things out! ..
'You're going drunk and very pale on the dark streets all alone'.
Here's an anecdote.
And even a sip was forbidden at the wheel. She did not know whether to laugh or cry.
She was afraid of herself and despised herself.
The door was ajar.
"Come in, I'm talking on the phone," said Anton from somewhere in the depths of the apartment.
The lock snapped behind.
The apartment, inky darkness, the windows shuttered dull, as in the war.
Groping she went somewhere, on something bumping until he stumbled on Anton, who barely hung up and collapsed on her, as a natural disaster, too, apparently preferring not to sort things out.
From him as from a pirate, smell the sea, Cuban rum and gunpowder.
Everything was as it was then, except that the pitch-black darkness around, and she did not need to say anything because she feared any word. And Anton, a good boy, whether he was drunk again or was playing a drunk..
And then, when she was taking him to the airport - also either slept, or pretended to be asleep.
Only when it announced the landing at Novosibirsk, he came to life and spoke of cinematic affairs, as though there was no Mnevniki.
And busily-friendly kiss, as always, on her cheek.
So their affair continued.
They met at random apartments, and then at Anton's place in his two-bedroom co-op house.
Though every once in any play room will be a fun rally for his appearance:
"Pavel, Pavel!"
Intellectual Anton's wife, Nina who was already the winner of the Lenin Prize in Moscow went and saw him every two or three months, in the intervals between series of experiments.
And who ever dares them to suspect some tricks after a dozen joint TV-serial!
The public suspected nothing because the game was against the rules.
They could catch along anywhere; for all they were something each other spouses of veterans on the eve of the silver wedding, they were be able to maintain a complete incognito.
Dennis apparently felt that she had 'someone there', and even experienced in their own way, but least of all he suspected Kravchenko.
She stopped him jealous, but he does not seem to really like this unexpected freedom.
In retaliation, Dennis pulled tighter together bits of creative teams. He entered into a creative form.
Ideas, plans, intentions other than the serial with Kravchenko, born endless serpentine, like a magician out of a hat. All this, of course, wound on her, tying her hands and feet, a veil, like a cocoon, eating some endless contracts, orders, libretto...
And the more he became a workaholic, the more she hated the typewriter and then the computer.
But could not do anything. She was supposed to run in this team, which without it would not move from their seats.
She was a slave of Denis, a Negro. Although all the fame and money were common, she did not want to.
She hated these stupid ideas and ideas of his.
Familiar nausea since the days of Leonid rolled over more often, but she had to force herself, especially as the hardships and wine in front of Dennis.
Gradually, the exciting hybrid of Denis and Anton exhausted and outdated, Kravchenko became in her eyes just Kravchenko, she cooled and was glad that the body regained its freedom.
Anton was very lonely in Moscow, despite its popularity fantastic. It appeared to him of something the mother, especially since in-law finally usurped by Philip mercilessly spoiled him.
Anger against her mother in law extended to his son, his place more and more occupied Anton, who wanted to educate and take care.
He read her his fables about the various small animals; she listened with pleasure, and advised to begin seriously writing for children.
But strangely, the warmer she treated Anton, the colder his body echoed at her touches.
Yana rejoiced in anticipation of freedom but awakened sensuality made itself felt.
Once Kravchenko, her jealous, not without reason, just do not beat her.
Finding intimacy with Yana, he lost its body. Anton instinctively understood this and chose her body.
The era of sincerity ended.
Kravchenko has ceased to be Kravchenko; he ceased to be Kolchugin but he was not Dennis any more.
He started a new love game of disguise, transformation, with changes of scenery, showing not only the actor's uncommon, but the director's, the literary and pictorial talent.
He woke her imagination forcing to participate in these exotic-erotic performances in their small apartment.
Yana struggled at first but gradually became involved, fascinated, too late, seeing new Kravchenkov's clever trap.
To enslave her again was to regain power over her.
"Pavel! Pavlel," laughed the audience with love.
The great actor Kravchenko took revenge for her that invented Pavel has killed his talent, his career.
Being doomed forever to remain in the eyes of the public Kolchugino, he brilliantly changed the masks, transformed into love games with her and was elated when she and, ceasing to be a feeling that loses his mind, experiencing the most acute pleasure.
Their romance would probably be the subject of his doctoral dissertation for a Freudian, a psychiatrist and sex therapist.
Denis-Yana-Anton. She linked in the Bermuda Triangle deeper and deeper.
Her former life became steeper: popularity, prosperity, prosperous family by today's standards... Beau Monde, a lover, a premiere, views, parties, seminars in Repin and Bolshevo; it was all she had, like many others in the years of stagnation; the Soviet authorities annoyed only by queues and censorship.
But what became more prosperous life, the more she felt nauseous.
A complete creative, business, material and sensual life - as told in the early nineties - the coveted collection held the fate and success - all she had in the seventies.
It was then that she already hated it.
Who enslave her then?
Dennis? Anton? Herself?
She could not live otherwise, could not and, probably, did not. She tried to live honestly 'to the fullest' but nothing worked.
And when she raced off to the then-brand-new car 'zhiguli' to Ostankino, to the Mosfilm, to Anton and home, were looking missing Philip, a desire increasingly encountered in her burning to cut the speed in any post and get rid of at once from all those of slavery: the computer, all kinds of bosses, home, life, the husband, the son, the lover, the mother in law...
And most of all she who put herself into all of these slavery...
Which devour her mind, talent, flesh, time, soul.
All her life...
The very process of being presented to her now invisible monster with dozens of tentacles, suckers; the words, touch, keyboard, phone calls; she physically felt she lost her strength, energy, time, life.
As if the keyboard prints in blood, the blood smell Anton kisses, handshakes in the House of Cinema, conclusions of art counsel and painful anticipation of the return of Philip who was not known where; it was like a medieval torture buck.
"He was an adult and like girls," her mother in-law brushed aside her night terrors turning to the other side.
"Where did he go?" sleepily brushed Dennis. "Go to sleep, don't play the fool."
And it seemed that the arrow of the old clock in the bedroom pulsated not on the dial but in her chest, including nerve, aorta, vessels.
And when, finally, Philip appeared in the morning as if nothing had happened and she stuck in him the traditional slap but he was impenetrable as the father and red as she at his age; she forgot in completely exhausting and pray for all of her monsters.
Philip has something to chew on the refrigerator, splashing in the bathroom, humming...
And she was happy that this man-eater, devouring it with meatballs, not killed by the gang as she imagined, or the vehicle, but it will be a long time with the whole company to torment her. While not completely devour.
The most horrible was the complete inability to change anything in this multi-faceted slavery, called a full happy life.
The whole world played in these games, as usual, boring or gambling, risk, found their meaning, and won or lost and, it seemed, managed to enjoy them.
She was no one to complain, except that the 'superfluous men' that they were in school. These ones would, perhaps, understand.
"Or maybe they pretend too?"Joanna sometimes thought - bored and obsessed with slot machines, simply because you cannot get up and leave?
All around her were in bondage: social climbers, workaholics, officials, party members, forced to listen to hours of a half-dead old man.
This very unfortunate old man in the throes of an artificial jaw grinding piles of dead words, instead of playing anywhere on the lawn with his grandchildren.
Slaves-womanizers, alcoholic, music lovers, foodies, drug addicts, gamblers, collectors, fashionable women, athletes and enthusiasts of ice fishing, ice-hole clock stiffening over to catch any unfortunate fish.
Lord, who is mad: she or they who do not want to ignore his madness?
"It's a life," she thought, "everything is live. Life is slavery to their ambitions, desires and responsibilities, and perhaps my opening is banal."
People ask God for the salvation of the disease or danger.
I'm all good but I want to scream.
Lord, save me!
From what?
There was no answer. All there beautiful words about the ministry of short-range casts even more melancholy and boredom.
Near there were the same monsters.
She remembered the horrible film about a beautiful pure girl who had taken to his home cripples and beggars who drank and abused her.
So what? Only siucude when it becomes completely unbearable?
"Save me, O Lord!" she prayed in a childish way. "Why is it so nauseous?
If you get pleasure, why not sell into slavery? So many people think. Slavery to idols, slavery to desires.
But why this slavery, the right to choose their slot machine to which you can stick and serve as the last slave; why do the world calls it freedom?
Then, years later, some of them would compete for the opportunity to increase tenfold the number of machines and work hard in the black, earning badges, others would share a room at the corners pilfer machines and destroy all the while continuing to play out of the ashes.
But it then. And now, Yana, being tormented by a multihanded monster wanted to leave the game.
However, the output does not seem to be.
To exit meant 'not to be'.
The idea of salvation by siucide gradually ceased to be intimidating.
Her soul cried out for help when it was ill or in danger.
"I'm all good but my soul cries out for help, therefore, I am sick and in danger," she prayed.
"Save me, O Lord..."